Learning to "leave it"

Today we took Skye to the shops, it was her first time of wearing the Halti out and about in town. I took her into the Pet Shop as I wanted to try and train her to walk pass the rabbits without fussing. I had some treats and I walked pass telling her to "leave it" and she was fine, a huge improvement from the last time! The pet shop did have lots of bones and treats unwrapped down at nose height but Skye did even try to eat them. I chose a new toy for Skye and Amber and I think Skye agreed that the one I chose was good as she wagged her tail and got excited when I picked it up off the shelf!

Then I walked her along to the food shop to find where all the others were. She didn't try to fuss with her Halti at all during the time we were out. In the food shop she was very good, and paid no interest to the food, she walked along beside me nicely.

Skye was worn out after her busy morning!

Over the weekend I was working on teaching Skye to "leave it", a command that's useful in many ways. The main thing I wanted was to teach Skye not to try and pull to get to somebody playing ball or throwing an object such as a tennis ball. Skye, being a retriever, has a natural instinct to fetch anything that you throw. On the sponsored walk somebody threw a stick into the river and Skye was heartbroken when she couldn't go and retrieve it. I hope that by teaching her to "leave it" if somebody does throw something then I can tell her not to pay any interest and get her to keep working calmly. She's getting there but finds it frustrating sometimes. As I said earlier in this post, I also used this command in the Pet Shop to get Skye to walk pass the rabbits and she did no problem. Another example of a situation when I'd use Skye's "leave it" command is in a coffee shop if there was food on the floor as Skye wouldn't be allowed to eat it. As Skye is so intelligent and motivated by food, she is exceptionally easy to train and picked up the "leave it" command really quickly.